How ready for an emergency are you?

In an emergency, you may need to enable your employees to work from locations that include satellite offices, partners’ or clients' facilities, employees' homes, or municipal facilities. Check out our checklist to help you determine how ready your business continuity plans are – if worse does come to worst.

Have you identified critical business processes that need to be preserved during a disaster? Have your IT people documented the infrastructure required to support those business processes: facilities, employees, systems/applications, data, platforms, and networks? Have you assessed threats/vulnerabilities to your business processes and infrastructure? Have you calculated the impact an outage would have on employees, customers, and business interfaces? Have you defined how long you can afford to be inoperable in terms of business financial and operational impacts (e.g., customer service, brand damage, lost revenue)?

Have you developed and implemented a risk mitigation strategy based on business impacts and priorities? Have you identified objectives, requirements, and priorities for recovery of critical business components (e.g., physical and human resources, technology, information, communications)? Have you identified and/or negotiated acceptable levels of service during recovery? Have you negotiated vendor contracts and/or lease agreements necessary to acquire equipment and services in the event of a disaster? Have your IT people determined technology gaps within your infrastructure to support you through mitigation, response and recovery stages?

"As with any risk that threatens the viability of business operations, continuity planning is critical. All business will be affected by an influenza pandemic."
— Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters guide to pandemic planning

Business continuity isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a big-time responsibility to manage and mitigate risk, and to limit the impact of any disruptive event: a pandemic, terrorist attack, a natural disaster or even a transit strike. In these and other emergency situations, it’s crucial that you have plans in place to avoid reduced productivity, lost revenues and damaged customer relationships. It means asking tough questions today about your workforce continuity plans for tomorrow.

• Do you have the right policies and procedures in place to guide employees during a crisis – to help them stay safe and do their jobs?
• Is your VPN robust enough to handle a large base of teleworkers in the event most of your people have to work from home during an emergency situation?
• Can you afford the higher costs associated with an unprecedented use of cell phones during a crisis?
• Do your employees have the necessary tools to reach and collaborate with people to do their jobs if they have to telework for extensive periods?

The operating challenges in a pandemic or emergency include:

• Government, company or self-imposed quarantines, travel restrictions or social distancing
• Reduced ability to hold face-to-face meetings
• Reduced or eliminated business travel
• Increased or reduced customer demand
• Varying levels of absenteeism depending on the type of crisis
• High level of emotional stress, excessive worrying and possible panic

How ready is your business to respond in these scenarios?

Regardless of the size or nature of your business, it’s vital for management teams to be proactive with workforce continuity planning and to understand the value of innovative technology in preparing for the unknown.